Adriana M. Manago

Me and my 400 friends: The anatomy of college students' Facebook networks, their communication patterns, and well-being.

Is there a trade-off between having large networks of social connections on social networking sites such as Facebook and the development of intimacy and social support among todays generation of emerging adults? To understand the socialization context of Facebook during the transition to adulthood, an online survey was distributed to college students at a large urban university; participants answered questions about their relationships by systematically sampling their Facebook contacts while viewing their Facebook profiles online. Results confirmed that Facebook facilitates expansive social networks that grow disproportionately through distant kinds of relationship (acquaintances and activity connections), while also expanding the number of close relationships and stranger relationships, albeit at slower rates. Those with larger networks estimated that larger numbers of contacts in their networks were observing their status updates, a form of public communication to ones entire contact list. The major function of status updates was emotional disclosure, the key feature of intimacy. This finding indicates the transformation of the nature of intimacy in the environment of a social network site. In addition, larger networks and larger estimated audiences predicted higher levels of life satisfaction and perceived social support on Facebook. These findings emphasize the psychological importance of audience in the Facebook environment. Findings also suggest that social networking sites help youth to satisfy enduring human psychosocial needs for permanent relations in a geographically mobile world--college students with higher proportions of maintained contacts from the past (primarily high school friends) perceived Facebook as a more useful tool for procuring social support.

Connecting Societal Change to Value Differences Across Generations Adolescents, Mothers, and Grandmothers in a Maya Community in Southern Mexico

This study tests the hypothesis that societal change from subsistence agriculture to a market economy with higher levels of formal schooling leads to an increase in individualistic values that guide human development. Values relating to adolescent development and the transition to adulthood were compared across three generations of women in 18 families in the Maya community of Zinacantán in southern Mexico. Grandmothers grew up in Zinacantán when it was a farming community; mothers grew up during the introduction of commerce in the late 1970s and 1980s; daughters are now experiencing adolescence with an opportunity to attend high school in their community. Comparisons were also conducted between 40 female and male adolescents in high school and a matched sample of 40 adolescents who discontinued school after elementary. Values were measured using eight ethnographically derived social dilemmas about adolescent relationships with parents and peers, work and family gender roles, and sexuality and partnering. One character in the dilemmas advocates for interdependent values; a second character advocates for independent values. High school adolescents were more likely to endorse characters articulating independent values than non–high school adolescents, mothers, and grandmothers. Involvement in a market economy was also associated with higher levels of independent value endorsement in the mother and grandmother generations. Results suggest that the introduction of commerce drove value changes between grandmother and mother generations, and now schooling drives change. Qualitative examples of participants’ responses also illustrate how families negotiate shifting values.

Negotiating a sexy masculinity on social networking sites

Social networking sites have emerged as spaces for both young men and women to portray themselves in sexualized ways, raising questions about how young men construct masculinity while embracing a kind of sexual self-objectification. In this case study analysis, a heterosexually identified male college student guides another male undergraduate on a tour of his MySpace profile in front of a video camera, supplementing the visual data with his own interpretations. The analysis focuses on how the young man takes up, or subverts, hegemonic masculinity in his sexual displays online. Data illustrate how irony is highly adaptive for perpetuating hegemonic masculinity on social networking sites, allowing men to collaborate using digital artifacts to socially construct an intractable kind of masculinity as they explore unconventional forms of sexual expression. The study also suggests that a heightened emphasis on public attention to the self is a critical lens for understanding shifting constructions of gender and sexuality in the millennial generation.

The New Emerging Adult in Chiapas, Mexico: Perceptions of Traditional Values and Value Change among First-Generation Maya University Students.

Social changes in indigenous Maya communities in Chiapas, Mexico toward increasing levels of formal education, commercialization, and urbanization are transforming traditional Maya developmental pathways toward adulthood. This mixed-methods study is based on interviews with a sample of 14 first-generation Maya university students who have also undergone a transition from a rural to an urban environment, either with their families or as part of their educational process. Greenfield’s theory of social change and human development suggests that formal education and urbanization shift developmental pathways in the direction of increasing values for individual autonomy. This study supports Greenfield’s theory: students perceive they are departing from traditional values by endorsing notions of choice, exploration, self-fulfillment, expanded norms for behavior, and gender equality. However, change is a gradual process of negotiating a pathway through old and new values. Qualitative analyses of interviews reveal how Maya university students are working to harmonize new values of independence, self-fulfillment, and gender equality with the traditional values of respect for elders and family obligation. The study concludes that formal education and urbanization are forces that create conditions for changes in developmental pathways toward adulthood consistent with the characteristics of emerging adulthood. This study adds to a growing body of literature documenting particular manifestations of emerging adulthood in developing countries around the world and shows how emerging adulthood may be a key developmental period connected to the socialization of individualistic values.

Feminist Identity Among Latina Adolescents

This study explores developing conceptions of feminism among Latina adolescents, their prevalence of feminist endorsement, and whether home environment and well-being are related to feminist identity. One hundred and forty Latina girls (Grades 9 to 12, M age = 15) wrote personal narratives of their understanding of feminism and whether they consider themselves feminists. The major themes that emerged in girls’ conceptions were notions of feminism either as equality, as femininity, as female empowerment, as bias, or as sexism. Results show older adolescents are more likely to define feminism with regard to group-based status differences and that opposition to female superiority is a common reason for rejecting feminism. Endorsement of an egalitarian-based definition of feminism was correlated with higher body image but was unrelated to self-esteem or parent education.

Our Scripted Sexuality The Development and Validation of a Measure of the Heterosexual Script and Its Relation to Television Consumption

The heterosexual script describes the set of complementary but unequal roles for women and men to follow in their romantic and sexual interactions. The heterosexual script is comprised of the sexual double standard (men want sex and women set sexual limits), courtship strategies (men attract women with power and women attract men through beauty and sexiness), and commitment strategies (men avoid commitment and women prioritize relationships). Despite evidence that women and men are aware of this script, and it is prominent in the media, there is no existing measure of endorsement of the heterosexual script. In Studies 1 and 2, we develop and validate a measure of endorsement of the heterosexual script. In Study 3, we demonstrate that television consumption predicts stronger endorsement of the heterosexual script. We discuss the implications of endorsement of the heterosexual script for sexual health and provide suggestions for future research using this scale.

Social Media, Friendship, and Happiness in the Millennial Generation

Internet social media have emerged as important contexts for friendship and social development during adolescence and the transition to adulthood. In this review, we consider how young people’s friendships via social networking sites reflect broader sociocultural shifts away from tight knit, face-to-face communities to “networked individualism,” a system of sociality that places the individual at the center of personally tailored social networks unencumbered by physical limitations (Wellman, Digital cities II: Computational and Sociological Approaches, 2002, pp. 10–25). In line with networked individualism, we propose that customized sociality is a principle cohering many of the features of friendship on social networking sites. Research suggests that adolescents and emerging adults have at their disposal convenient and efficient tools for relatedness, and at the same time, increased options for autonomy. Alongside these changes are new opportunities and risks for happiness in the journey to adulthood. Among the opportunities are increased convenience for cultivating closeness with friends and enhanced access to social information and social capital, which lend themselves to forms of social support conducive to happiness in a mobile world. The risks youth face include the allure of transient pleasures of instant gratification friendship and social snacking, increased demands to negotiate promotional self-presentations broadcasted by shallow networks of contacts, and the challenge to cultivate happiness in a social world that seems to increasingly define self-worth and life satisfaction based on image, success, and popularity.

Tempted to Text: College Students’ Mobile Phone Use During a Face-to-Face Interaction With a Close Friend

We examined whether emerging adults would engage in mobile phone use (MPU) when given the opportunity to socialize face-to-face with a close friend in a laboratory setting. Sixty-three U.S. college student friendship dyads rated their friendship quality in an online survey before coming into the laboratory together. When they arrived for their appointment, they were asked to wait together in a room for 5 min. A hidden camera recorded each dyad. Friends then separately rated the quality of the interaction. We coded time spent using mobile phone in seconds. A hierarchical regression conducted at the level of the dyad controlling for friendship quality and gender showed that more MPU was associated with lower quality interactions. We discuss findings in terms of the potential for MPU to interfere with the development of friendship intimacy.

Values for gender roles and relations among high school and non-high school adolescents in a Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico

In the current study, I describe values for gender roles and cross-sex relations among adolescents growing up in a southern Mexican Maya community in which high school was introduced in 1999. A total of 80 adolescent girls and boys, half of whom were attending the new high school, provided their opinions on two ethnographically derived vignettes that depicted changes in gender roles and relations occurring in their community. Systematic coding revealed that adolescents not enrolled in high school tended to prioritise ascribed and complementary gender roles and emphasise the importance of family mediation in cross-sex relations. Adolescents who were enrolled in high school tended to prioritise equivalent and chosen gender roles, and emphasised personal responsibility and personal fulfillment in cross-sex relations. Perceptions of risks and opportunities differed by gender: girls favourably evaluated the expansion of adult female role options, but saw risks in personal negotiations of cross-sex relations; boys emphasised the loss of the female homemaker role, but favourably evaluated new opportunities for intimacy in cross-sex relations.

The sexual experience of latino young adults in college and their perceptions of values about sex communicated by their parents and friends

This study examines the values in Latino young adults’ perceptions of messages about sex during their formative years and their current level of sexual exploration and sexual assertiveness. Latino young adults in college (N = 218) rated the prevalence of four types of messages they heard from parents and friends: Sex is only for marriage (procreational), sex is only appropriate in a loving relationship (relational), sex is for pleasure (recreational), and the sexual double standard. Relational sex was most prominent in parental messages; recreational sex was most prominent in friend messages. Women reported more relational sex messages and men reported more recreational sex messages from parents and friends. Fewer procreational sex messages from parents and more recreational sex messages from friends were associated with higher reported levels of sexual exploration and assertiveness. We propose that sexual exploration and assertiveness are behavioral manifestations of individualistic values embedded in sexual discourses among friends and family.